North and South Korea, indicating their respective capitals, Pyongyang and Seoul; North Korea's border with China; and a tiny border with Russia. The inset shows the Korean peninsula's location in Asia. [You may click on the image above to view full-size.]

Our
‘options’ in Korea:

Only
one is lawful and peaceful

A
WALL commentary

Peace
talks follow a war. Why not hold those talks first
and
skip the war?

Donald
Trump, who boasts of his art of the deal, said on May 1 he would be
honored to meet with North Korea’s leader.

Now
he accuses the North of “very, very dangerous behavior,”
contemplating “pretty
severe things”
as the military provides “options.” And the top U.S.
general in South Korea, Vincent Brooks, warns he can commence war at
any time.

What
changed? Moon Jae-in won election as South Korean president in May,
upon promising better relations with Pyongyang. On July 4 the North
announced its launch of a long-range missile. Is our military more
worried about the North attacking America or about peace displacing
us from Korea?

Military’s
“options” probably don’t include a peaceful
solution. But it’s the only sure way to avoid disaster. The
1950–53 Korean war killed millions — without nuclear
weapons.

If
Trump still believes in his deal-making skills, let him go to
Pyongyang, a la Nixon to Beijing. He’ll be welcomed.

The
Tokyo-based paper Chosun
Sinbo,
known as a Pyongyang mouthpiece, says “avoiding armed conflict
and seeking ways to find a clue to settle it via diplomatic
negotiations have become a pressing issue that the international
community can no longer turn
away from.”

Talks
with North Korea could achieve compromise, as in past years. Both
sides might halt displays of force: Northern missile tests and
U.S.-South Korean military exercises. North Korea might
possibly suspend its weapons development, as we end sanctions and
deliver food.

Don’t
expect Northern dictator Kim Jong-un to destroy nukes overnight. He
needs them, not to attack, which means suicide, but to avoid the fate
of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qadaffi. Kim distrusts a nation that
overthrew governments in Chile, Guatemala, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and
Panama and seeks Syrian regime change.

Besides,
what moral authority remains after A-bombing civilians and making
thousands of huger bombs? Trump reaffirmed Obama’s plan for a
trillion-dollar program to “modernize” our nuclear
weapons and their delivery system (violating the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty) and — like North Korea —
boycotted the UN proceedings for a nuclear-abolition treaty.

Heed
the proverb, “You catch more flies with honey than with
vinegar.” Instead of threatening Kim, try respecting him. He’s
a killer, but so is Donald J. Trump, who as candidate repeatedly
promised peace yet as president delivers intensified war. Stop
treating South Korea as our puppet and let South talk to North.

Trump’s
icy attitude toward China melted after his meeting with President Xi
Jinping. A Trump-Kim meeting would let the Korean people breathe
easier.

Threatening
war

Harry Truman, who
started our Korean war — and the unconstitutional doctrine of
presidential war-making. War was his first resort, and it
brought only disaster.

General
Brooks is prepared to launch a war at any time, by his (July 4)
statement.
Only “self-restraint” keeps us from attacking, a choice
we can change at any time.

Combat
is the military’s stock in trade, but a general’s
function is not to drum up trade, e.g. to encourage war by provoking
an adversary with threats. Our armed forces are supposed to be under
civilian control. Does Brooks speak for Trump? Has Trump left him
free to talk and — worse — to act?

Whether
or not to commit aggression may depend on a leader’s whims in a
lawless dictatorship, not in a supposed nation of laws, under a
constitution.

On Truman's orders, young
men — many of them draftees — were shipped to Korea to kill and,
for tens of thousands, to die. This is an artist's view of a
bayonet charge.

Describing
our supreme law, Hamilton wrote that the president as
commander-in-chief is merely “first General and Admiral”
(The
Federalist,
69, 1788). But “it is the peculiar and exclusive province of
Congress, when the nation is at peace, to change that state into a
state of war” (“Lucius Crassus” 1, 1801).

By
threatening war, Brooks exceeded his authority and violated the
United Nations Charter. As a treaty, it is federal law. It was signed
in San Francisco in 1945 mainly to end “the scourge of war.”

From
Article 2: “All Members shall settle their international
disputes by peaceful means…. All Members shall refrain in
their international relations from the threat or use of force against
the territorial integrity or political independence of any state….”

Note
that the threat
of war violates the Charter, let alone the starting
of
a war.

Another
law that may surprise Brooks — and President Trump, whose main
job is to see that the laws be faithfully executed — is the
Pact of Paris, better known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Parties
pledged to renounce war as an instrument of national policy and
settle disputes or conflicts by peaceful means only.

Signed in 1928 by representatives of 15 nations, attracting scores of others later, it remains in effect. Frank Kellogg, secretary
of state under President Coolidge, and French Foreign Minister
Aristide Briand sponsored it. The Senate approved it in 1929, during
Hoover’s administration. Its violation became grounds to
prosecute Nazi and Japanese leaders for the crime of aggression.

Bloody
years

To punish the
North Korean leader, for 3 years bombs fell on his people, like
this mother and child in devastated
Pyongyang.

The
Korean war lasted three years, 1950–1953, ending in stalemate
and armistice under President Eisenhower.

A
North Korean death toll of 1.77 million, 1.55 of them civilians —
a fifth of the North’s population — is attributed to U.S.
military sources.
Most deaths resulted from U.S.
carpet bombings.
The South Korean military estimated 991,000 civilians dead, wounded,
or missing in the South. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese
“volunteers” also succumbed.

American
deaths totaled over 54,000 (original toll), or some 37,000 (revised
Pentagon toll decades later), according to older and newer almanacs.

Congress
did not authorize war. Interpreting a North-South incursion (one of
many) as “Communist aggression,” President Harry S Truman
— whose claim to infamy then lay in his nuclear annihilation of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 — acted on his own in
dispatching armed forces. Then he got the UN Security Council to
rubber-stamp his “police action” in the absence of the
Soviet delegation (protesting that Red China was not seated).

Few
in Congress, notably Senator Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio), dared to
challenge the usurping of congressional war power. Some even praised
Truman’s “courage” — as though he volunteered
to grab a rifle and risk his own life.

Had
Congress impeached and removed Truman, bringing forces home, not only
would countless lives have been saved, but also his high crime of
illegal war-making would not have been imitated by subsequent
presidents.

They
included Johnson and Nixon in Indochina; Reagan in Latin America and
the Middle East; Bush Sr. in Panama and Iraq; Clinton in Iraq,
Yugoslavia, and five other countries; Bush Jr. in Afghanistan, Iraq,
and Pakistan; and Obama — the first 100% wartime president —
in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria. Trump
emulates and escalates the lawless carnage in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Syria, and Yemen, risking conflict with Russia in Syria.

Good
option

Few
know what those wars have been all about or can cite any worthwhile
results from the blood and suffering. Nevertheless, too many
Americans — leaders included — entertain these perverted
notions:

Our “national interest” justifies the loss of lives.

It’s up to the commander-in-chief to start
wars.

Foreign countries are primarily our battlegrounds, rather than
people’s homelands.

The
[online]
Atlantic,
July 5, expressed another disputable idea: Because an armistice, not
a treaty, ended the conflict, Korea “is still technically in a
state
of war.” No, Congress never declared a state
of war
with Koreans. Anyway, an armistice can end a war. America formerly
celebrated Armistice Day every November 11, marking the end of The
Great War.

However,
in warning of “the potential for catastrophic consequences”
of another Korean war, the writer, Krishnadev Calamur, gets no
argument here.

In
The
Atlantic
magazine, July/August 2017, Mark Bowden tells “How
to Deal With North Korea.”
Opening alarmingly with an imaginary missile blasting Los Angeles, he
sees “no good options,” some worse than others. They
comprise (1) “Prevention,” a massive attack, which would
succeed but trigger mass killing; (2) “Turning the screws,”
a series of lesser attacks, which could provoke an all-out response;
(3) “Decapitation,” murdering Kim, very difficult; (4)
“Acceptance,” letting him develop nuclear-armed ICBMs
while continuing containment efforts, including sabotage and
draconian economic pressure.

Bowden
chooses option 4. All four involve lawlessness.

He
neglects a fifth one, a good
option.
It’s the only lawful one and harms nobody. Article 33 of the UN
Charter lights the way: The parties to any dangerous international
dispute “shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation,
enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement,
resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means
of their own choice.”